Wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita 55

The Blessed Lord said: 

1. Fearlessness, purity of heart, steadfastness in knowledge and Yoga; almsgiving, control of the senses, Yajna, reading of the Shâstras, austerity, uprightness; 

2. Non-injury, truth, absence of anger, renunciation, tranquillity, absence of calumny, compassion to beings, un-covetousness, gentleness, modesty, absence of fickleness; 

3. Boldness, forgiveness, fortitude, purity, absence of hatred, absence of pride; these belong to one born for a divine state, O descendant of Bharata. 

4. Ostentation, arrogance and self-conceit, anger as also harshness and ignorance, belong to one who is born, O Pârtha, for an Asurika state. 

5. The divine state is deemed to make for liberation, the Asurika for bondage; grieve not, O Pândava, you are born for a divine state. 

6. There are two types of beings in this world, the divine and the Asurika. The divine have been described at length; hear from Me, O Pârtha, of the Asurika. 

7. The persons of Asurika nature know not what to do and what to refrain from; neither is purity found in them nor good conduct, nor truth. 

8. They say, "The universe is without truth, without a moral basis, without a God, brought about by mutual union, with lust for its cause; what else?" 

9. Holding this view, these ruined souls of small intellect and fierce deeds, rise as the enemies of the world for its destruction. 

10. Filled with insatiable desires, full of hypocrisy, pride and arrogance, holding evil ideas through delusion, they work with impure resolve. 

—Bhagavad Gita, 16:1-10